Study of Emergency Support for Solo Travellers in India: Accessibility, Response and Service Coordination

Abstract

Solo travel has emerged as a distinct tourism segment, creating specific requirements for destination and tourism-service management. Travellers undertaking journeys without companions may have to independently seek assistance during illness, accidents, theft, loss of documents, harassment or other emergencies. India has established emergency and tourist-support mechanisms, including the nationwide Emergency Response Support System (112) and the Ministry of Tourism's multilingual tourist helpline (1363). However, these mechanisms have not been sufficiently examined from the operational perspective of travellers who are travelling alone. Existing solo-travel research has predominantly examined perceived risk, safety concerns, destination choice and travel behaviour, while tourism emergency-management research has emphasised multi-stakeholder coordination. This study examines emergency support for solo travellers in India through three dimensions: accessibility, response and service coordination. A qualitative document-based approach is adopted using secondary data from peer-reviewed literature, government publications, tourism-authority documents and institutional sources. The documents are analysed thematically to identify existing support mechanisms, access pathways, response arrangements and coordination requirements. The study finds that India's emergency-support infrastructure provides important formal access points, but the solo-traveller perspective remains insufficiently integrated into tourism-service planning. The paper proposes a traveller-centred support pathway linking emergency identification, accessible contact, appropriate response, stakeholder coordination and follow-up. The study contributes to destination-management discussion by shifting attention from general perceptions of traveller safety towards the operational accessibility and coordination of emergency support.